Letting Go

Letting go.  What does that mean? Can we ever completely let go of something that was completely assimilated into our life?  Will it ever be completely gone?  Probably not.  I will forever carry pieces of my past with me, but they will eventually loose their power over my actions and thoughts.

I never thought that Rich would be married before me, if ever at all.  From the way he spoke about women, you would think that he would rather keep one locked up in a cage to poke at than to share his life with. He despised women and everything they represented.  Yet, when he told me that he was in love and getting married to his ideal woman, I believed him. 

I was finishing up college at Fort Lewis in Durango when I found out that Rich and Betty had plans to be married.  Looking back, I judge the person that I was calling her blind and naive that she was unable to see through the facade.  There were so many signs that something dark was hidden behind the curtain of perfection.  The person I was before believed them, all of them.  They told me that my life was great, and I believed them.  They told me that we had the perfect family, and I believed them.  They told me that if I had a problem or thought something was wrong that I only had myself to blame, and I believed them.  I grew up thinking that if I admitted to myself or anyone else that things weren't perfect that I would be the one on the chopping block.

Betty's family didn't like Rich and hated that Betty was marrying him.  They saw the truth.  They saw my families darkness, so why couldn't I?  Soon after the wedding, Rich made sure that Betty was distanced inch by inch, mile by mile from her family.  A few months into the marriage, Betty had nearly cut off all communication with her family.  Rich's first plan was to build a hand crafted 10ft by 10ft trailer to live in during their road trip to Alaska where they would start a homestead and live off the land. When they ended up in Homer, Alaska broke cold and tired of the dark, Rich decided that they would move to Florida and buy a sail boat which they would sail around the world.  He had never sailed a day in his life.  The first time that they took their old decrepit boat out into the bay, the engine broke down and they didn't have the skill set required to sail it in.  Penny-less and out of ideas Rich moved back to my parents' house where he would take care of my fathers slowly dying business, while my parents were "saving the world" in the Congo.  This is where I met up with Betty and Rich on my Christmas break from teaching in France.

Fear and dysfunction filled the house like an impending storm .  Betty's once weightless black hair had turned into tired streaks of grey.  Her womanly figure had diminished into one of a ten year old boy.  If you blew hard enough, you would have snapped her wrist in two.  Deep circles of fatigue haunted her face.  Her light was smothered out, her living was reduced to survival.  Rich always had a temper, punching holes in walls, smashing computer screens, lashing out and bunching me so hard that I would fall to the ground gasping for air.  I thought it was normal.  I thought this was how all older brothers acted.  Somehow, seeing the affects of his dysfunction on Betty was what I needed to wake up.  My false reality slowly began to crack.